Route City

for Half-Life

“In Route City we play as Gordon Freeman, whom we played in original Half-Life. The game takes place in a small city named City 47 somewhere in Black Mesa. It starts when Gordon Freeman finds himself on a train heading to City 47. As he remembers, a mysterious man in a blue suit said to him something about a mission in City 47. It was something like “Gordon needs to navigate around the city and find someone that will open the awaiting route for him. He can’t remember who it was exactly and what does he need to do next”, but as the train approached the station, a security guard said that Gordon is too late and quickly opened the closet with a HEV suit and some batteries. Gordon slipped into the HEV suit, quickly ran towards Barney, but as he ran through the metal detectors, it all started! The rest of the story you will uncover while playing Route City. Good luck!”

Ok, Thanks X-Demon, I re-started the game and this time got level changes and have arrived at City 17 station terminal. This did not happen with the first attempt to run game, the train stop in the tunnel just before the station and there it stayed the level change did not trigger, well that’s my story.

Having now finished this beta version the author and team should be encouraged to first clean up the mod before continuing the story with the release of the final game. As the mod stands it’s worth the download and play time, but with the biggest of the bugs coming in the early part may lead to some players giving up before getting deep into the action. The first elevator is the biggest of the bugs, got killed a lot going down and not sure if this was by design or fault also just could not get the elevator back up again, well not with me in it, however it did go up a couple of times before I could get in, but in the main it just would not trigger.
I would like to suggest one small detail to the mappers please sign post the “Railroad Control Center” it’s hard enough trying to get scientist to follow you, but when you dont know where you are taking them it becomes bloody difficult. The game improves with depth with no further bugs after the early sets, one jump comes to mind where you take too much damage, after crossing by way of overhead cables you jump down into a small garden with zombies, I think the plan was to first jump to the lower wall then the ground, however it would not let me make the wall and landed me in the garden every time with damage. The mod is well thought and planned out with a nice balance between alien and Grunt combat mixed with puzzle solving and climbing about. In the main only the exterior design would appear to be new or at least different from the original HL game, all other aspects of the game, such has textures, weapens, skins and interior design are has the original game, so not much new here. It would be nice to think that the team would complete the mod with first cleaning up the first half of the game and giving some new more interesting stuff in the way of design and texture in the final half. I enjoyed playing and was worth the download.

This is a pretty sweet mod that has some bugs that needs to get fixed. Sometimes the bugs really gets annoying and wanna make you stop playing. Except for the bugs, pretty good maps, and good gameplay. You should give this mod a try except if you can’t tolerate bugs.

Does anybody know, how to go on after the tank? I can’t blow it up, not even with 10 grenades. I can climb up a ladder, and onto some wires, but they’re electrified, and I can’t find a switch anywhere, to turn them off…

Does anybody know, how to go on after the tank? I can’t blow it up, not even with 10 grenades. I can climb up a ladder, and onto some wires, but they’re electrified, and I can’t find a switch anywhere, to turn them off…

Ok I downloaded Route City. I turned it on and I got to the train station. I go pass the metal detectors but then I don;t know what to do next. I can;t get through any of the guards because I have no weapon. I was able to get between the train to the little train yard. I went up the ladder on the side of the building but I couldn’t open the window.
I don’t know what to do and its pissing me off. If thats the entire mod then tell me. So what DO I DO now at the train station?

OK one LAST question. I have the scientist with me and I took him to the train station with the metal detectors and I brought him everywhere but he didn’t do anything. I took him to the building where the assassins spawn and he wouldn’t;t come up the stairs.
What do I do?

I find all the good reviews puzzling. For me this was not very good. The initial train ride was a little interesting but the whole feel was one of emptiness, which is normal considering this is a beta.

I found the route confusing, for example, when you get to the ground level, should you go to the door on the right or far down the left?

Going down the left changes level suggesting that it is the way to go, but there’s no where to go, so you go back.

I had to jump a fence to get to the water, which kills you instantly with no warning. Then you go across the bridge and buildings suddenly appear.

How the heck are you supposed to get past the Garg with no real weapons and if you do, the damn scientist won’t go through the gate.

There’s a nice city location with new textures and sky. Some events are based on the beginning of Half-Life 2. The town is populated by scientists, Barneys, soldiers and monsters. I didn’t understand what’s going on.

The city is interesting, but the indoor locations are bland. The levelchange between two city locations is impressive. The author did a good job and created a city which doesn’t feel like a corridor which walls look like buildings. There are many different places in the city, and that’s great. The encounter with ninjas in the storage is done very well and overall gameplay is good. The puzzles where we search for a way to progress are very clever. Solving the puzzles unlocks new city areas.

It’s possible to get stuck in the train after the map change. The rotating doors are not convenient. It’s too bad that the development stopped, it would be great to see a finished version with fixed bugs and well designed indoors. But what we have is much better than nothing.

The ending was absolutely unexpected, and that’s good.

Despite its flaws, this mod is worth playing, because it has a great unique point – very open environment.

Not a bad modification, caused me to positive emotions, and some fun gameplay. But it lacks the full mapping, it’s pretty weak.

The objective of the game to save scientists trapped in Route City, perhaps it is a military town. We arrive in this city at a famous vagon, which was presented as elevated train. Coming from him, seeing the bored soldiers, who did not respond to us.

We go to the train station where we were met by a guard who obligingly opened the door to the room with HEV suit. Clothed him, with a confident view of trying to pass through a metal detector as it is written in a text file with a description of the story. But for myself I have not seen any detector, a room more like a big cafeteria for labs. It was then that the soldiers at once will become our enemies, and we no have weapons in our inventory and there to fast naff. It is unclear what they do not like my HEV. In addition, they are not saying anything to me, began to shoot, not searching me all sorts of detectors, whether it is an error the script, whether such a strange idea. Beat modmapmakers (developers) for this.

But do not worry, because soon the hands will get different kinds of weapons and we have no fear.

The whole process of the game will be in Route City, where we will move back and forth, including something, then drive for a guard, then scientists, by the way is the only moment in the game, which is slightly unnerving. Just hostage very reluctantly following us, yelling at each step and saying that he would not go further.

Will certainly a lot of battles and soldiers, and monsters, including Gargantua. However, the city made a terrible mapping and to wander, my eyes wants to be closed, getting into other areas, I want to go back. If the open part of the city made normal, but the room awful, especially something one, seems a nightclub for the military is very dark and not a damn thing to make out even with a flashlight, in addition to shoot us women assassins.

The game is almost linear and all the difficulties should arise. On normal difficulty it is passed without any problems and complications, the main thing to not forget about Gargantua and keep ammo for him.

That said, I think you’re able to draw conclusions about this modification and make a decision about its download.

Some of the parts are a pain the doors being my main gripe, unless you are in exactly the right place (which made it difficult to get the scientist into the railroad control centre) the jam, close or stick you in position. This suffers from bad planning with areas only coming into view after a map change and some areas not being obvious where to go, but it was for the most part fun (which is what I look for). This is yet another mod that really would have been good if more testing had been done, but alas it comes from a time when testing was just something on most authors wish list.

This showed a lot of promise but never really delivered on those promises which seems to be true of quite a few of the 100 so far.

I too managed to kill the big fella, but no amount of door opening in either direction or talking and pushing that whitecoat could get him to go any further….even if I actually knew where we were supposed to be going in the first place…sooo, I too gave up at that point… 🙁 Shame really, was all going rather well until then…anyway……NEXT !

This was a really pleasant mod. I personally like the city setting, and it is designed good in here.The mod had a very good flow, and even had few unexpected things happen and it had some good scripted sequences.However, there are a lot of tiny things that kinda work against the mod. But still very enjoyable mod, I recommend you play it.

I’m at a loss as to where to go next. I’ve cut the power generator off (although not sure I needed to since I didn’t need to use the power wires overhead, I just entered through the front door). I can’t find any way to get over to where the scientist is waiting at the locked gate. Any suggestions?

update: scratch that question, I found a new area and was able to proceed.

Well this pack turned out to be pretty decent after all. If you can get past the directionless wandering that is inevitable in the first set of maps (the actual Route City maps) then you might have some fun with this one. The finale battle is pretty good.

There are a couple issues with this pack. First is the lack of polish and testing (as this is clearly a beta version). Things like the city appearing upon a level change, general layout issues, and the severe problems with escorting anyone (scientists, Barnies). But I think the key issue with Route City is its nearly complete lack of direction (at least until you get access to the small 1-person train car). You can end up wandering for ages (like me) or do things way out of the author’s intended order (like Phillip). By the time I got to the Garg I was armed to the teeth and he was a piece of cake.

There are other drawbacks to this pack, like some really basic map sections, lack of detail, and tons of impossible crates, but they aren’t too major. And at least nearly every crate holds something of value.

There are some pretty fun parts here, particularly after you get on the 1-person train car and take it for a ride. There’s a nifty script after you get off the train. The end battle takes place in a warehouse, with teleporting aliens and an Osprey that drops off grunts. It makes for a fun challenge, at least until you realize you can just walk right past everything without even dropping down to the floor (you enter on a catwalk) thanks to the longjump module. I was also able to cross the river (which normally kills you) starting with a long jump and high health, and that didn’t trigger a level change so it was clear the mapper didn’t plan for that.

It’s worth a play but don’t expect a polished mod. But there is some fun here, it is really too bad it wasn’t tested, polished, and wrapped up for a proper release.

I don’t know why the city is city 47, conssidering cities with numbers were named like that under the cmb rule, so I suspect this was released when HL2 was alredy out or so and defenetly that fact inspired the author of this mod, here we have a complex maze of routes that doesn’t set a clear path and many strange maps interconection, possible normal because it was a beta, this for me was like an archeollogical discovery because when I first played it I didn’0tr complete it because I was so confuse and most probably because I was an incompetent gamer so I didn’t finished feeling it was a really bad done mod with no end, untill I found the way to pas to the garg, and kill it and then proceed to the train rail, and go to the last part, which ahs an interesting fight against xenian and grunties falling from an oorion, so finding that part was cool but complicated due to the door that leads to the garg was stucked and I had to us noclip to open it, so that’s an annoying detail.

Mapping is original but ackward and complicated and falls in to the Assault on Roswell effect, that’s going backwards for geting some esential assets like that freakin RPG to destroy that really difficult APC, or going to desactivate the generator and then carry the scientist with u to lift up the barrier that stopped the train rail that leads to the last section, so that akes the player works harder in a really disproporsionated way like 10/90 in pareto terms, so be warned that u going to waste many time here with the puzzles and the paths, also many paths are unclear and some of them are so dumb and don’t lead anywhere or to a no way out like that vent duct that leads you to the toxic waste pool.

I’d say that the only thing worthy about this mod is a different design plus an attempt of making interesting in the pulzzes but no in the combat..

I had a mixed feeling about this mod. Some parts were nicely done while some others were tedious and frustrating.

Over the course of the mod I felt that the environments I was travelling through were of inconsistent design and quality. Some areas felt really claustrophobic, while others felt really open and empty. Towards the end, I thought that the quality of the levels and detailing was improving, which lent itself to some very cool set-pieces. On the whole, though, the visuals were very basic and boxy and I really didn’t feel like I was in a city.

The combat through this one was pretty sporadic. Like the environments, I felt that the combat was very inconsistent. Some areas played very well, while others seemed to have enemies just thrown in for the sake of it. Again, I felt the combat picked up near the end with the large scale battle.

The most frustrating thing I found with this mod was that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing for most of the time and it was only by trial and error did I find buttons to push. The author needs to make it clear to the player where to go next and hopefully throw in the why as well.

If you enjoy puzzle and button hunting with the odd but of combat in between then this may be worth your time. However, if you don’t like tedious, obscure puzzles or just generally feeling lost, then you will probably want to skip this one.

The action of this was fun but I kept finding that I would be getting stuck and would have to glitch or cheat to find the way to go. Also I had to fight a Gargantua and a Tank without any weapons good enough to beat them. I found an explosive stash in a building right behind the tank but I had to use god to get to it. After I had killed the Gargantua with the explosives from the building you have to escort a scientist to somewhere and have the hassle of him getting stuck, I had to noclip to get past this and then I found an RPG which I presumed I was meant to use to defeat the tank and Garg.

I can’t really think of much to say on this one. Fun action but the huge amount of bugs ruined it for me.

Related to our discussion in the 100 Summer Days of Nostalgia Podcast #4, the map to load directly to start in the base after the city is rcbase1. If you want a challenge, give yourself a bunch of weapons but not the long jump module. The base isn’t outstanding but I did like the final battle setpiece.

I’m puzzled by the fact that this was released as a beta. I think this barely reaches alpha standards.

The quality of the mapping was poor, there was little to no narrative throughout which left me completely unaware of what I was working towards and above all it seems that it hasn’t been play tested by the author, let alone anyone else. On numerous occasions I got physically stuck in some of the cramped areas and had to noclip to continue. On the flipside, some areas were so needlessly open that the rare appearance of props or furniture fell into insignificance.

The entire mod just feels bland and lifeless and the only challenge I faced throughout was trying to stay awake.

This is one of my favorite mods. I love the city settings, very few half life mods uses a city setting (mods like Poke646, Vendetta, Black Operations…).
The mapping was very simple but I liked it. The outdoor maps were amazing, the skybox was awesome and the mapping was good. The indoor maps were blocky and the textures looked ugly. The combat was balanced with a lot of interesting battles (APC battle, Gargantua battle). The mod was very short, I completed it in 3 hours because the day when I was playing was raining and there was a blackout.
Unfortunately this mod was just a beta, and the creator will never release a full version. This mod is one of the few mods with a city setting, that’s why this is one of my favorite mods.